Stop believing it’s about piracy. It’s really about forcing you to buy the same content over and over again.

You can’t ship made-up things, apparently:

The FedEx guy then grabs cans of nitrogen (N2) and neon (Ne), with their store-advertised “purity” of 78.084 percent and 0.0018 percent respectively (which was our way of being clever about selling cans of normal air, since that’s their percentage in the atmosphere — which, of course, was our way of making more money for 826 Seattle by selling products that cost almost nothing to produce). Here’s what the atmospheric gas cans look like on the shelf:

FedEx guy: Nope. You can’t ship these either.

Me: But… they’re empty! It’s just air. And… nitrogen? It’s, like, almost 80% of the atmosphere. There’s nothing dangerous about nitrogen, even if it were pure.

FedEx guy: They look too much like bomb-making materials.

Me [going into dumbfounded mode]: Bomb… Neon? What? Is there anything here I can legally ship? How about this bottle of tap water?

I hand him a bottle of Certainty (tagline, “For when it’s preferable to think you know more”), which looks like this: [pic elided]

FedEx guy: Nope. It still looks too suspicious, too much like bomb-making materials.

Me: But it’s “Certainty.” That’s not even a thing. I just made that up. [That’s not strictly true. It’s a scientific term/idea, and we sell it alongside bottles of “Uncertainty.” But it’s like having a bottle labeled “Friendship.”]

FedEx guy: It’s just too suspicious.

[long pause]

Me [going into post-9/11, TSA-style super-dumbfounded mode]: So what you’re saying is you can’t ship any sort of containers, even if they’re empty? You know that we originally ordered these empty cans and jars from a company, and they shipped them to us.

FedEx guy: They must have used a different vendor [“vendor”? I can’t remember, some word like that, like a “service”].

Which I imagine he said because he couldn’t bring himself to say, “It’s the words that are on the containers that are dangerous” — even after I had opened them all and demonstrated the utter harmlessness/emptiness of the containers themselves.

(Via BB.)

The Saints just ended the Philly Eagles’ season to advance to their first conference championship in the history of the team. Ever. 27-24.

Wow. Last year, the Saints went 3-13 and did not play a home game all season. Also, we just became HUGE Seattle fans.

So now he’s threatening to beat up Keith Olbermann. This is just fantastic:

Apparently Geraldo was visiting with 104.1 FM’s Monsters just before Christmas, when they asked him about the time he made international headline for disclosing too much information about troops in Iraq. Geraldo claimed the incident was blown out of proportion, largely by NBC — and specifically Olbermann. Geraldo then began mumbling semi-audible names, seemingly meant to describe Olbermann: “midget … punk … slimeball.”

But then, with the Monsters helpful prodding, Geraldo went a step further, leaving no doubt about what he was saying. He called Olbermann a coward — specifically a “[female part of the anatomy] who wouldn’t walk across the street against the red light.”

He then said he was ready to fight him, saying: “I would make a pizza out of him.”

Oh, and before leaving the topic, Geraldo offered an example of a TV talker who’s a “real man” … that would apparently be Montel Williams.

No word yet on whether Olbermann even knows Geraldo called him out. (Maybe we’ll see.)

UPDATE 1/9: Yes, Olbermann does know now. On his MSNBC show last night, he cited this blog and then recounted the story. He said the “midget” remark confused him, claiming: “I’m about 7 inches taller than he is.” And after describing Geraldo’s desire to fight him, he said: “Geraldo, you should not give me a hard time. I can still remember when you were a big deal … back when I was a kid.”

Tonight Florida showed their selection for the title game against supposed No. 1 Ohio State was earned, and in the process made pretty clear what paper tigers the Buckeyes were. We’re getting a little ahead of ourselves, as at this moment the score has just gone 41-14 on a short punch by Tim Tebow, but with that kind of margin we’re reasonably sure that Ohio State can’t manufacture a win when they’ve been limited to a single offensive touchdown all night.

The final stats on this game will make it clear that it wasn’t as close as the score, even. LSU’s performance in the Sugar Bowl wasn’t this dominant, at least not over the whole game. Florida sacked Ohio State’s Heisman winning QB over and over, once very nearly forcing a safety. The Gator defense was unstoppable, giving up only 7 points and holding the Buckeyes to a pitiful 82 offensive yards. 41 points and 369 total yards tells the tale of the Florida offense, for which Ohio State had no answer at all. (Meyer could have easily tacked another 7, or at least 3, onto the total had he been bloody-minded; we like that he did not.)

Now, for the record:

• Alabama (UR) — Independence, vs. Oklahoma St (UR) — LOST
• Arkansas (12/13/12)– Capitol One, vs. Wisc (6/5/7) — LOST
• Auburn (10/10/9)– Cotton, vs. Nebraska (22/22/23) — WON
• Florida (2)– BCS Championship, vs. Ohio State (1) — WON
• Georgia (UR)– Chik-Fil-A, vs. VaTech (14/14/13) — WON
• Kentucky (UR) — Gaylord Hotels Music City, vs. Clemson (UR) — WON
• LSU (4) — Sugar, vs. ND (11) — WON
• SC (UR) — AutoZone Liberty, vs. Houston (UR) — WON
• Tenn (17) — Outback, vs. Penn State (UR) — LOST

So, 6 and 3 for the SEC, or one worse than Heathen predicted. Congrats to the Gators, our new national champs, and to the other five bowl-winning teams who made it clear once again that the SEC is the toughest conference in college football.

Update: The rankings are in, and Florida’s championship is official. However, Ohio State managed to hold on to the No. 2 spot — ahead of LSU, which strikes us as iffy at best. We’re pretty sure the Tigers would eat the Buckeyes alive, too.

ESPN also came up with another little fact worth remembering: Ohio State may be all that in the Big 10, but they’re 0 and 8 against the SEC in bowls. In major BCS bowls this year, the SEC is 2-0, with dominating margins (amusingly, 41-14 in both). In major BCS bowls this year, the Big 10 is … 0-2.

ESPN’s Mark Schlabach: “Notre Dame shows it doesn’t belong in BCS bowls“

Against LSU, Notre Dame once again proved it doesn’t deserve to play in BCS bowl games, which have become its birthright because of the school’s national stature and ability to draw high TV ratings.

And by shutting out the Fighting Irish in the second half and erupting for 577 yards of offense in the game, the Tigers again proved Notre Dame is no longer capable of beating teams like LSU. Or Ohio State, Michigan and Southern California, which also handed the Fighting Irish lopsided losses in the past 12 months.

From Our Attorney:

FCC fines NBC a record $250,000 for on-air fellatio of Notre Dame

You thought we were done being pissed off now that the Democrats control Congress and we’ve got football? Think again.

John Gilmore has been pursuing a case against the Feds over the right to fly domestically without identification; it’s been amply demonstrated by folks like Bruce Schneier that the ID requirement has no security implications (and in fact exists to solve an airline business problem, not a security issue; n.b. that it’s now impossible to sell airline tickets to another person) — every one of the 9/11 hijackers, for example, had valid ID. Part of Gilmore’s case is a desire to force the government to disclose the law in question, something they won’t do because they claim the law is classified.

Think on that for a minute. We now have classified, secret laws that are not available for our review, nor are they available when they’re legally challenged, as in this case.

That’s all kinds of fucked up. And yet, the Supremes have decided not to hear the case, rejecting the appeal without comment and letting stand the lower court’s opinion that Gilmore’s right’s aren’t abridged by being forced to show ID. The question of secret law has been effectively shoveled under the rug until the next challenge, but that doesn’t help us today.

More at Slashdot and BoingBoing.

In this fantastic bit, they discuss airport security with expert Bruce Schneier:

Inherent in the obsession on liquids and gels, Mr. Schneier said, “is the notion that we can stop the bad guys by focusing on tactics, which is moronic. I pick a defense, you see my defense, and then you, the bad guy, decide what to do. That’s a game we can’t win.”

He added, “Screeners are so busy looking for liquids that they’ve missed decoy bombs in tests. We’ve defined success so weirdly. When T.S.A. takes away some frozen tomato sauce from grandmom because it might become a liquid, they think of it as a success. But that’s a failure. It’s a false alarm.”

(Local copy, since NYT rots links.)

Now the football is almost over, he’re something to piss you off:

Via signing statements, Bush has now asserted that he can read your mail without a warrant.

As predicted, LSU just handed perennially-overrated Notre Dame their 9th consecutive bowl loss[1] in the Sugar Bowl. Final score: LSU 41, Notre Dame 14. LSU quarterback Jamarcus Russell outproduced the much ballyhooed ND golden boy Brady Quinn by better than 2 to 1 — and he’s a junior who could come back and lead the Tigers next year.

Revised bowl rundown, now with final AP/USAT/BCS rankings:

• Alabama (UR) — Independence, vs. Oklahoma St (UR) — LOST
• Arkansas (12/13/12)– Capitol One, vs. Wisc (6/5/7) — LOST
• Auburn (10/10/9)– Cotton, vs. Nebraska (22/22/23) — WON
• Florida (2)– BCS Championship, vs. Ohio State (1) — 1/8, 8pm
• Georgia (UR)– Chik-Fil-A, vs. VaTech (14/14/13) — WON
• Kentucky (UR) — Gaylord Hotels Music City, vs. Clemson (UR) — WON
• LSU (4) — Sugar, vs. ND (11) — WON
• SC (UR) — AutoZone Liberty, vs. Houston (UR) — WON
• Tenn (17) — Outback, vs. Penn State (UR) — LOST

The SEC has played 8 of its 9 bowls, and taken 5 of them. Cross your fingers for the big show next week.

[1. The last time Notre Dame won a bowl, Heathen lived in Tuscaloosa, and most of you people had never heard of the Internet. It was the January 1994 Cotton Bowl, against A&M.]

Nick Saban has accepted the Alabama offer. We figure he’ll be looking for a job again by either November 2007 or November 2008, as the alumni and Mal Moore will no doubt expect miracles and wonders immediately, and will either fire him or run him off before any real progress can be made.

We are alerted to the following by Heathen Agent code-named Light Bulb:

So after running in for the [game-winning] 2 point conversion, Ian Johnson ran over to his girlfriend (one of those little Boise State cheerleaders) and asked her to marry him. I’m telling you, this had to be a script.

Seriously.

Someone’s posted the last few plays of the Fiesta Bowl on YouTube. What’s not here: the fact that OU’s tying two-point-conversion play required three iterations, two of them successful. (The first failed, but included a Boise penalty; the second worked, but included an OU foul.)

If you’re keeping count, that’s 22 combined points in the final 86 seconds of regulation football.

We’ll own our SEC predictions, good and bad, but you Sooners are on your own. Zabransky played a damn near perfect game, and it was a hell of a lot more fun to watch than any of the other contests we saw today. Come on: how often do you see a Statue of Liberty work that well, in OT even — especially when smart money would’ve had them kick the PAT and move on to a second OT?

Also, Division I-A Playoff NOW.

We’d have taken Michigan, too.

We we learned today: Never count on Arkansas or Tennessee. At least Auburn came through. Updates in red.

• Alabama — Independence, vs. Oklahoma St — LOST
• Arkansas — Capitol One, vs. Wisc — LOST
• Auburn — Cotton, vs. Nebraska — WON
• Florida — BCS Championship, vs. Ohio State — 1/8, 8pm
• Georgia — Chik-Fil-A, vs. VaTech — WON
• Kentucky — Gaylord Hotels Music City, vs. Clemson — WON
• LSU — Sugar, vs. ND — 1/3, 8pm
• SC — AutoZone Liberty, vs. Houston, WON
• Tenn — Outback, vs. Penn State — LOST

This leaves the Southeastern Conference at 4-3 with two games to go — our strongest pick (LSU) and our weakest (Florida).

(This is why we don’t make our living calling football games, but we’ll note that many actual sports pros agreed with our expectation that Arkansas and Tennessee would win their respective bowls. We have, at least, the consolation of knowing the Fulmer lost.)

So, it’s Bowl Season, and of the dozen teams in the SEC, 9 got bids.

Let’s pause for a moment and see if any other conferences did as well, shall we?

Ok, that’s out of the way. (No, I don’t think so, but we could be wrong — we can’t be bothered to check.)

Here’s the bowl picture for the SEC:

• Alabama — Independence, vs. Oklahoma St — LOST
• Arkansas — Capitol One, vs. Wisc — 1/1, 1:00
• Auburn — Cotton, vs. Nebraska — 1/1, 11:30
• Florida — BCS Championship, vs. Ohio State — 1/8, 8pm
• Georgia — Chik-Fil-A, vs. VaTech — WON
• Kentucky — Gaylord Hotels Music City, vs. Clemson — WON
• LSU — Sugar, vs. ND — 1/3, 8pm
• Ole Miss — no bowl
• MSU — no bowl
• SC — AutoZone Liberty, vs. Houston, WON
• Tenn — Outback, vs. Penn State — 1/1, 11:00
• Vandy — no bowl

No big surprises here — the schools in the Heathen Home State have lagged for years (modulo Eli’s tenure at Ole Miss), and Vandy is hampered by actual admissions requirements, but the balance is solid.

Only 4 of the 9 have been played; of those, only one team disappointed (and it was ours, dammit). Coming up, though, we have very good expectations about the final five games:

Wisconsin lost to its only ranked opponent in the regular season, while Arkansas emerged as a surprisingly powerful presence in the SEC this year. We give the edge to the Razorbacks.

Auburn’s still very strong, so we’ll pick them to beat Nebraska — playing in a stronger conference, they still have a better record than the Cornhuskers, who beat only one ranked team in four shots during the season (#24, A&M, back in November).

LSU should be a shoe-in over perennially-overrated ND. They played four top-ten teams on the road, as we previously noted, while ND hasn’t beaten anyone of note all year. The Tigers can disappoint, the ND does have a good guy behind the center, but we’re still wearing purple and gold in our hearts on this one (as much as it pains us).

Penn State’s in a bowl? Why? Expect Fulmer (9-3 in the SEC) to whip Joe Pa (8-4, heavy on the creampuffs — is Youngstown State even Div I-A?), leg or no leg. We can’t bring ourselves to root for Rocky Top, so we’ll have to content ourselves with pulling against Penn State.

That leave the Big Show on January 8. Right now, we still pick Urban Meyer’s Gators over Ohio State, but that’s a closer call. Both had 4 ranked opponents in the regular season, but one of Ohio’s was an on-the-way-out Penn State back in September. Florida dropped one of its ranked games, losing to Auburn in a hell of a game back in October. All we’re really sure about here is that it’s likely to be quite a football game.

We figure we may be wrong about one of these picks, so we estimate the final SEC bowl record at 7-2.

(Oh, one more, designed to bait certain readers: in the Orange Bowl — featuring a shatteringly irrelevant pairing of Wake Forest vs. Louisville — we pick “whatever else is on”.)

Can anyone enlighten us on the snowglobe menace?

We note again that there is not a damn thing that makes sense about any of the TSA regs that have gone into effect since 9/11, and that they probably make us LESS safe. Binary explosives of the sort thought to be planned for the London non-attack-attack won’t work; nail files aren’t dangerous; the ID requirement is for the airlines, not security. It’s all bullshit, and nobody in a position to change anything cares. Hell, most citizens don’t care; they’re fat and happy and complacent, and naively assume this theater makes us safer.

And people wonder why we’re misanthropic.

From the LA Times:

Today, Hacienda Napoles is in ruins, taken over by jungle foliage and bats. The sprawling Spanish-style mansion has been gutted, scavenged by treasure hunters looking for stashes of gold and cash buried under the floors. Escobar is long gone, cut down in a hail of police gunfire.

But the hippos are still here.

The military locked up a whistleblower for 97 days in a maximum security facility in Iraq.

One night in mid-April, the steel door clanked shut on detainee No. 200343 at Camp Cropper, the United States military’s maximum-security detention site in Baghdad.

American guards arrived at the man’s cell periodically over the next several days, shackled his hands and feet, blindfolded him and took him to a padded room for interrogation, the detainee said. After an hour or two, he was returned to his cell, fatigued but unable to sleep.

The fluorescent lights in his cell were never turned off, he said. At most hours, heavy metal or country music blared in the corridor. He said he was rousted at random times without explanation and made to stand in his cell. Even lying down, he said, he was kept from covering his face to block out the light, noise and cold. And when he was released after 97 days he was exhausted, depressed and scared.

Detainee 200343 was among thousands of people who have been held and released by the American military in Iraq, and his account of his ordeal has provided one of the few detailed views of the Pentagon’s detention operations since the abuse scandals at Abu Ghraib. Yet in many respects his case is unusual.

The detainee was Donald Vance, a 29-year-old Navy veteran from Chicago who went to Iraq as a security contractor. He wound up as a whistle-blower, passing information to the F.B.I. about suspicious activities at the Iraqi security firm where he worked, including what he said was possible illegal weapons trading.

But when American soldiers raided the company at his urging, Mr. Vance and another American who worked there were detained as suspects by the military, which was unaware that Mr. Vance was an informer, according to officials and military documents.

They did this to an American citizen who could not have been more emphatically a good guy. And he had virtually no recourse. Trusting people in power is never a good idea; they need oversight, which is why we have a system of checks and balances in our government. This administration has sought from the very first to dismantle these failsafes and create an imperial presidency; stories like Vance’s are the inevitable result.

(Local PDF because the NYT links rot.)

Over the weekend, a couple NFL records were broken. Most famously, Brett Favre broke Dan Marino’s career passing completion record (4,974 and counting), which is pretty cool. However, a sexier-sounding record fell this weekend, too: Most Career Points.

You’d sort of think this would be a running back or a receiver, but no, not really: it’s a kicker. Morten Andersen (perhaps the only Dane in the game) of the Atlanta Falcons took the title on Saturday night with two extra points against the Cowboys. Andersen, who is forty fucking six years old, now has 2,435 points in his 24-year career, edging past the former record-holder, Gary Anderson.

Andersen had previously broken another of the prior Anderson’s records last week, when he kicked his 538th career field goal. He’s 538 for 679 on field goals, and 821 of 831 on PATs. Also, he’s old enough to have fathered the last few seasons’ rookies, which is just cool.

Continental is apparently in talks to merge with United, according to the Wall Street Journal (registration required; AP blurb here).

Continental typically ranks very highly in terms of customer service, on time performance, perqs, etc. They’re the only major not to hit serious trouble after 9/11 (Southwest, while bigger, is not usually called a “major” for some reason). United, on the other hand, is infamous for their customer-hostile behavior, baggage problems, and performance in virtually every category. But they’re big, so there’s that. Every single time we’ve flown on an airline that isn’t Southwest or Continental, we’ve had some sort of problem — lost or delayed baggage, cancelled flight, overbook, rude employees, something.

If this goes through, we suspect we’ll be on Southwest a hell of a lot more.

From the Onion: BCS Determines No Team Worthy Of Facing Ohio State In Championship Game:

COLUMBUS, OH — In what many BCS officials are citing as “proof that their flawless system indeed works,” no Division 1-A college football team was found to possess the sheer excellence required to face Ohio State, the No. 1 ranked team since the season began, in this year’s BCS Championship game.

[…]

Florida Gators head coach Urban Meyer agreed with [Michigan head coach Lloyd] Carr, saying that even if his team had been offered a chance to play Ohio State, he may not have taken it.

“We don’t deserve to play Ohio State. Period,” Meyer said, adding that though Florida had a tough schedule, being the SEC champion was not the same thing as being Ohio State. “Every coach that I know voted for Ohio State in the coaches’ poll, or at least had them second after their own team. In any case, I can certainly see why no one who votes in the BCS wants the national championship to be decided by a mere football game.”

All coaches interviewed supported Meyer’s claim, with the notable exception of Notre Dame head coach Charlie Weis, who said that despite his team’s two losses, weak schedule, and unremarkable defense, he still felt in his heart that Notre Dame deserved a chance at the title — a feeling that, according to a BCS official who wished to remain anonymous, was not completely overruled.

“First of all, I should note that although Notre Dame is an independent, and a highly regarded independent at that, it does not have its own special set of rules as far as determining its football team’s rankings,” the official said. “Instead, we use a special set of mathematical algorithms to determine its football team’s rankings, which the BCS specifically determines only after ranking all the other teams. And though I shouldn’t say this, we — er, the computer — would have dearly loved to have seen Notre Dame in the championship.”

Perfect.

Pinochet is dead. More here and here. Our government supported him. Aren’t you proud?

At Verizon, apparently, 0.002 dollars is no different than 0.002 cents. Boneheads.

There’s a guy in Florida serving 25 years in prison for having pain meds with a prescription. There is no evidence he ever sold a single pill, but the charge is for trafficking on the grounds that the State seems to think they know better than his doctor about how much medicine he should get.

This is of course bullshit, but not even the appeals court has the balls to do anything about it.

“World Record Snatch“

(No, it has nothing to do with Britney’s beaver.)

There’s liquid water on Mars.

Not to overstate, but this is fucking huge.

However, certain Heathen have nothing but snark; quotes included “And big four-armed green monsters? Because if there are no big four-armed green mosters, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” and “Interesting. Are there REAL LIVE YETIS?”

Sadly, NASA remains silent on the subjects of four-armed monsters or yetis of any color.

A security flaw has surfaced in Microsoft Word that is so severe that Microsoft is recommending you not open or save Word documents until a patch is available.

…the flaw can be exploited if a user simply opens a rigged Word document.

Affected software versions include Microsoft Word 2000, Microsoft Word 2002, Microsoft Office Word 2003, Microsoft Word Viewer 2003, Microsoft Word 2004 for Mac and Microsoft Word 2004 v. X for Mac. The Microsoft Works 2004, 2005 and 2006 suites are also affected because they include Microsoft Word.

There are no pre-patch workarounds available. Microsoft suggests that users “not open or save Word files,” even from trusted sources.

We suggest you do as they say. Forever.

According to its highest-ranking Arabic member, not very well. As late as 2004, the chief counterterror guy at Quantico didn’t know the difference between Sunni and Shia.

Sigh.

Like now, when they point out the absurdity of restricting OTC cold medicine to combat meth production: Where Have All Our Cold Pills Gone?

The ONDCP [Office of National Drug Control Policy] cites declines in meth lab seizures as evidence that the peudoephedrine restrictions are working. But as state officials have acknowledged (and as anyone who was paying attention could have predicted), the decline in local production has not reduced the overall supply of meth, because the vast majority of it comes from Mexican traffickers who are not affected by the Dayquil crackdown and who were happy to pick up any slack. There is no evidence that forcing cold and allergy sufferers to register as suspected meth manufacturers has had any impact on meth consumption.

We could’ve told you that, nobody asked.

Bill Curry, who knows at least a little about coaching at Alabama, has a few words on the musical coaches phenomenon that seems the rule today.

(Curry at Alabama: 1987-1989 seasons; 26-10, 1 SEC championship and 3 bowl appearances, including the 1990 Sugar Bowl; he was the 1990 SEC Coach of the Year. Despite all this, the alumni ran him off for going 0-3 against Auburn.)

An alumni list we read suggests that Alabama has the following offer on the table for the former most-hated-man-in-the-SEC:

• $30,000,000 over 7 years
• His son gets to be Offensive Coordinator
• He picks his own Defensive Coordinator
• He gets the AD job when it opens up, if he wants it
• He reports directly to the president, bypassing the existing AD, Mal Moore

It’s probably bullshit, but it’s a fun thought experiment.

Kansas Outlaws Practice of Evolution.

(Onion, natch.)

The reason? Rev. Joel Hunter thought the organization should focus on things other than gay marriage and abortion, like, say, poverty and actually helping people. Apparently, that’s incompatible with the Coalition’s mission, which points out just how much of a lie their name is.

Alabama has dismissed Mike Shula after only 4 years. Shula took over after a particularly fine sequence of events:

Shula took over the proud but troubled program less than four months before the 2003 season after Mike Price was fired following spring practice for his off-the-field behavior — specifically a night of drinking at a Pensacola, Fla., strip club. Price got the job after Dennis Franchione bolted for Texas A&M.

Before that, Mike DuBose was fired/resigned after some sort of affair, as I recall. Yay! Musical coaches!

Shula’s firing would mean Alabama is looking for a head coach for the fourth time since 2000. The Tide has had seven coaches in the 24 years since Paul “Bear” Bryant’s last season in 1982. Bryant had directed the Alabama program for 25 years.

The seven: Ray Perkins (1983-1986), Bill Curry (1987-1989), Gene Stallings (1990-1996; national championship in 1992), Mike DuBose (1997-2000), Dennis Franchione (2001-2002), Mike Price (2002-2003; did not coach any games), and Shula (2003-2006). If memory serves, only Curry and Stallings left of their own accord (though it’s fair to say that Curry was pushed).

Shula hasn’t been consistent (’03: 4-9; ’04: 6-6; ’05: 10-2; ’06: 6-6), but he’s young and this is his first head coach job. Alabama is still feeling the effects of its sanctions, and lost its star quarterback after last year (not to mention an unknown number of other starters like receiver Tyrone Prothro, who’s still out from a broken leg suffered in 2005). Offensive production has been weak, even in the 10-2 season, but is that enough to send a young guy like this packing? Maybe this is the right plan, and maybe it isn’t, but at some point shouldn’t they get a coach and keep him more than a few years to see what he can really do? Review the dates above and you’ll see that no coach has stayed at UA more than 4 years since Stallings. This endless game of musical coaches can’t be good for the program.

The Irish got precisely what anyone with a brain expected last night in their drubbing at the hands of the USC Trojans. Why anyone thought this game was a gateway to a title bid for ND is beyond us; they’ve played only two serious teams all season (USC and Michigan), and got their ass handed to them both times. (No, JoePa’s Lions don’t count — they’ve lost every serious game they played, and some besides.) The Irish have been overrated all year long, and fell a long way early after the Michigan game — yet somehow still started bubbling back towards the top on the strength of midseason wins over such powerhouses as Army, Navy, Air Force, and Stanford. Having 2 losses with ND’s schedule is no mean trick; you can even go undefeated if you play only creampuffs. That doesn’t mean you should be a top ten team. That the Irish are still rated 12 is insane; does anyone really believe that, say, Texas or Tennessee (tied for 17 in the AP) wouldn’t beat the snot out of them? For that matter, does anyone really believe that Wake (16) or Rutgers (13) could beat either UT?

At least the top 5 makes some sense. At the other end of the schedule difficulty scale from the likes of Boise and Notre Dame is the SEC’s LSU, who (as ESPN points out) have played 4 top 10 teams as away games and still escaped with only 2 losses (then-#3 Auburn, and then-#5 Florida). Can anyone else say that?

(Of course, this is just another post saying how fscked up the BCS thing is, and how much we really need a proper playoff system that would, if done properly, make clear what paper tigers ND and Boise are, and how good programs in tough conferences are by comparison.)

So, Turkey Day and all that. Enjoy.

However, there’s another possible Safari exploit floating around out there that once again points out a key bit of configuration advice every Mac user should follow immediately.

1. Open Safari

2. Choose the Safari menu (upper left, next to the blue apple) and pick Preferences

3. Click “General” on the left hand side

4. Find the option that says “Open ‘safe’ files after downloading”

5. MAKE CERTAIN THIS OPTION IS ABSOLUTELY NOT CHECKED OR ENABLED.

That is all. It’s a stupid security hole Apple uncharacteristically created by allowing Safari to open (read: execute) certain “safe” files as soon as you download them. With it off, you’ll have to do it yourself. The difference is key; some nefarious sites may send unexpected files with nasty payloads, which Safari would then open automatically. Whups!

With the option off, this can’t happen — unless, of course, you decide on your own to open the weird, unexpected file on your own. And you know not to do that, right?

Happy Turkey Day.

It should surprise no one to learn that the cop in question has a history of dubiously justified violent episodes, and was at one point fired from a “real” police force.

Bush’s nominee for the family planning department of Health and Human Services thinks giving birth control to women is demeaning.

The Bush administration has appointed a new chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services who worked at a Christian pregnancy-counseling organization that regards the distribution of contraceptives as “demeaning to women.”

Eric Keroack, medical director for A Woman’s Concern, a nonprofit group based in Dorchester, Mass., will become deputy assistant secretary for population affairs in the next two weeks, department spokeswoman Christina Pearson said yesterday.

Keroack, an obstetrician-gynecologist, will advise Secretary Mike Leavitt on matters such as reproductive health and adolescent pregnancy. He will oversee $283 million in annual family-planning grants that, according to HHS, are “designed to provide access to contraceptive supplies and information to all who want and need them with priority given to low-income persons.”

The appointment, which does not require Senate confirmation, was the latest provocative personnel move by the White House since Democrats won control of Congress in this month’s midterm elections. President Bush last week pushed the Senate to confirm John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations and this week renominated six candidates for appellate court judgeships who have previously been blocked by lawmakers. Democrats said the moves belie Bush’s post-election promises of bipartisanship.

The Keroack appointment angered many family-planning advocates, who noted that A Woman’s Concern supports sexual abstinence until marriage, opposes contraception and does not distribute information promoting birth control at its six centers in eastern Massachusetts.

Great.

A UCLA student was tased multiple times yesterday when he failed to leave the library rapidly enough after a “random” check revealed he didn’t have his student ID with him. The guy’s name is “Tabatabainejad,” so we’re not all that convinced the check was random, but whatever. There’s video, taken by another student. It shows them repeatedly shocking the guy, at least a couple times for not standing up after being tased quickly enough. Nice. Even better? The cops threatened to tase anyone who got too close, and reportedly even threatened students who asked for their badge numbers and names. More coverage at CBS here.

These thugs need to be in jail, not enforcing the law. At a minimum, they should be personally liable in a civil suit. They have no business “enforcing” our laws.

Slashdot reports that Samsung has developed a machine-gun wielding sentry robot for use along the Korean DMZ. Of course, it also has night vision — and a speaker, so it can warn you before killing you.

There’s video at the second link. We are, of course, completely doomed.

November 10 marked the 31st anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Until recently, we assumed said wreck (a) happened at some distant point in the nautical past and (b) on an ocean instead of during the Ford administration (and our lifetime) and on a (really big) lake.

The particulars, in case you’re interested but unable to click:

The Fitzgerald was a 729-foot, 26,600 ton capacity lake freighter launched in 1958; she was the largest boat on the Great Lakes until the 1970s, when thousand-foot ships arrived. Her primary job was hauling ore across Lake Superior.

On November 9, 1975, she left Superior, Wisconsin under the command of Ernest McSorley with a load of taconite bound for a steel mill near Detroit (not Cleveland, as Gordon Lightfoot sang). Weather turned bad as they crossed the lake, so they turned north towards the Canadian coast to try to avoid it. By the afternoon of the 10th, the ship had suffered minor damage from the storm; a nearby ship, the Anderson, reported heavy wave activity, and radioed the Fitzgerald to warn them. McSorley reported they were “holding their own,” which is the last anyone heard from them. The Fitzgerald went down with all 29 hands soon after, coming to rest in two large pieces more than 500 feet down. (That’s another part we have trouble with: “Holy Shit! There’s a lake 500 feet deep!” We suspect this is due to growing up in South Mississippi.)

Lightfoot’s hit song (it peaked at #2) came out only a year later; he was, for all practical purposes, writing about a current event, not a historical episode. We mention this every now and then, and we are continually surprised that our weird misapprehension is pretty common. “Really?” they say; “1975? Are you sure?” Yep.

And we wonder why no one will play Trivial Pursuit with us.

“Drunken elk terrorizes Swedish schoolchildren“

During World War II, the Leica camera company helped Jews leave Germany by getting them jobs with Leica in the US.

Enormously overrated Louisville (#3!) lost to #15 Rutgers last night.

What IS it about these “unbeaten” or one-loss teams getting ranked highly despite playing few quality opponents? No, Rutgers isn’t really in the title hunt, either, despite their own unbeaten status. Louisville was Rutgers’ first ranked opponent, and they play in a creampuff conference. Louisville itself has only played a few real games, beating the shade-of-its-former-self Miami early in the season, plus a win over likely paper tiger West Virginia (another member of the Big East).

“Undefeated” is meaningless if you only play one or two serious games. Come play in a competitive conference and then see how well you do. We’ll wager any of the one- or two-loss SEC teams would wipe the floor with Louisville or Rutgers.

We’re really running low on actual journalists, and it doesn’t look like the J-schools are turning out any new ones. This week, we lost Ed Bradley, 60 Minutes anchor and longtime friend of the late Hunter. S. Thompson.

So, apparently this year features an NCAA rule change on kickoffs. Heretofore, as we understand it, time didn’t start ticking again until the receiving team touched the football. This year, under the new 3-2-5-e rule, time starts when the kicker touches the ball.

This sounds minor, but it opens the door for a pretty significant loophole, as shown here.

The linked blogger explains:

Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema exploits the new 3-2-5-e rule, designed to shorten games. After scoring a touchdown with 23 seconds left in the first half against Penn State, the Badgers successfully run out the clock and keep the Penn State offense off the field by twice being offsides on the kickoff. As for shortening the game, this clip is 6:06 long (worth every second, in our opinion), meaning the final 23 seconds took much longer to run under 3-2-5-e than it would have under the old rules. And a good job by analyst Paul Maguire for picking up on what Bielema was up to. Because the rules can’t be changed in the middle of the season, we can only hope other coaches do the same to hasten the repeal of 3-2-5-e in the offseason.

It’s definitely a bit of a cheesy move, but well within the rules — and, of course, we can’t help but like just about anything that makes Paterno as mad as he clearly is at the end of this clip. Football Heathen? Holla back in commentland.

Update: We brought this up on a listserv we’re on, and another question cropped up: Why didn’t PSU just decline the penalty once it was clear what the Badgers were up to? Sure, their field position would suck, but having the ball is better than NOT having the ball. Is the answer that offsides is a “dead ball foul” and cannot be declined?